THE EPIC JOURNEY

The Pacific Gray Whale's Long Path to Recovery

- Charles C. Hofer

A small boat drifts in the shallow waters of San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja California Sur, Mexico. The motor has been cut off. The six passengers sit in silence, bobbing in the gentle waves, scanning the waters in breathless anticipation.

Pooshh! Right next to the boat, a spout of water shoots into the air. It's followed by the booming exhale of a giant underwater beast. It's a Pacific gray whale breaking the water's surface.

Each year, Pacific gray whales gather in these waters to spend the winter months. For some females, it will be time to give birth to a single calf. The young will grow strong...and they'll need to.

Just weeks after their birth, the whales will feel compelled to go north to their summer feeding grounds off the coast of Alaska. Pacific gray whales complete an annual migration of more than 10,000 miles (16,100 km) roundtrip, making it one of the longest annual migrations in the entire animal kingdom.

But the Pacific gray whale's story is so much more than a tale of migration. It's an epic journey that has taken the species from the edge of extinction to becoming one of the world's greatest conservation success stories. Today, the Pacific gray whale is the only marine mammal to ever be removed from the endangered species list due to population recovery.

A Deadly History

Whales and humans have had a long and complicated relationship.

Whaling the hunting of whales for food or products-dates back more than 4,000 years. From Japan to Canada, Native communities relied on the giant animals for meat while their bones were fashioned into tools. For centuries, these small whaling efforts had little effect on whale populations worldwide. This was subsistence hunting, where people only killed what they needed to survive.